Thoughts on different breeding styles

So I don’t have a ton of long-term time in my life to work on long lines and want to achieve my goals as quickly as I can. Therefore, I’m starting a line of western quarter horses, and am breeding them starting at 7 years old (lowest birth stats around 220, highest around 310). I personally have no problem with this, as I don’t have the time to wait 15 weeks until my horses are more mature and have higher stats. (I also have realized that higher grade horses generally earn less money on average and place less often due to higher competition and larger stat ranges).
I am also exclusively breeding from my 100 starting horses (I still have to buy some over the following weeks). So they are going to be line bred, but with no visible inbreeding (no duplicates on the first page).

I was curious as to what other players think of these practices in terms of horse value. My main goal isn’t to sell my foals, but ideally I’d like to provide some high quality stock for other people’s herds.

Do either of these practices devalue horses in your eyes? Does it matter how long it takes for horses to get to a certain point stat-wise? (In a certain # of generations) Or does NSS and conformation matter more? (The way I see it is that I can always add a ton of stats in one generations, but it takes many generations to achieve good NSS and conformation).

Well ideally with the game pre nss you would raise up the stats on a horse to be bred and partly transferred to their foals. That along with the new nss system is how I think people may not be too jazzed about buying low stat horses. Meh. I have years of work in my Appaloosas for nothing. 

(btw if you cant tell I am not on the nss bandwagon) lol

Pre-recode, one of my goals was to get down to 0 nss, but sadly that isn't possible any longer, so I don't really look at nss per say.

However, since stats and "clean" lines are the only two things I can breed for personally (genetics go poof from my brain and keeping a chart for it doesn't help lol + I just don't get the conformation stuff) I would say both stats and "clean" lines are up there in being important to me and would devalue a horse I was looking at, in my eyes. That being said, I rarely buy outside my line since I like to keep things theme or neat :'D So take my words with a grain of salt :'D

And in case you were wondering what clean means for me, I prefer no broken pedigrees or any of the same lineage in a horse. But I don't mind if there is a different breed (for instance, I used to breed Halffies pre-recode and which after the recode, when I switched to Friesians, some of the lineage wasn't brought over as players had left and not come back, so they are a few without a breed in my favorite Hadass line, however if someone had come back and made them say Tekes or something instead of Fries, I would have been okay with that). 

But again, that's because those are the two things my mind can wrap around and focus on, the things I can have goals in. Would looovveee if being able to possible breed down to 0 nss stats came back, because then I could have a major stat goal instead of just get as many before breeding time :'D 

it's difficult to really say what is or isn't considered good breeding, everyone has their own style and priorities so what works for you might not work for someone else. i could maybe say low nss and no inbreeding is generally considered good, but everyone has their own interpretation of what counts as inbreeding from clean lines on the first page to clean lines all the way back to foundation horses. and others may not care at all lol. some people are alright with nss over 80 while others swear by 60 or under. it's perfectly alright to just do what makes you happy and breed horses however you want.

there is also just not a lot of people active on EV right now, so even if you somehow bred a "perfect" horse with high stats, low nss, great color and confo, you still could have trouble selling. what you described sounds like horses that could potentially sell, low nss western QH are one of the most popular types of horses here. if you keep their lines clean and stats/nss low as you said, you should be able to find buyers. but if they don't seem to be selling well that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong, there's just not always people looking to buy at the moment.

@ww Oh I didn’t know that 0NSS wasn’t possible anymore, why is that? 

@Bubbles I had some of the same thought process. Ugh I have to get past the people pleasing part of me and just do what I want instead of what’s “acceptable” or “the norm” :’) Honestly, I would just love some low NSS horses (40 or below) and I know I can achieve that in about 6 generations with the right horses, I just don’t have years to spend on one project! But yes your input is very helpful thank you :) I guess it is all subjective.

I honestly can't remember, I just remember being sad because I became very close with my Tekes to reaching it.

And gosh yeah, getting past people pleasing is super hard, I feel you there! It's one thing to say enjoy and say you will, and another to do it :'D I've fallen prey to that myself, so I get yah ♥

Glad I’m not alone! It’s difficult to pull myself out of that mindset and just do what I want lol

@Saditome: i can relate lol, i used to get sad if my foals didn't sell but now i'm alright with sales taking weeks or even months. and i'm exploring more unpopular disciplines instead of just whatever is trending. if i want to raise a herd of driving Morgans, nobody will really want to buy them but no one can stop me either. :p
plus i can just throw on some tack and show my sales in the meantime, i don't mind parting with 5/5 tack if it helps out a buyer and every day a horse doesn't sell they're just bringing in more earnings. c:

also @Wiki does that mean the recent random NSS drop still doesn't go down to 0? i assumed all this time it was now possible if you got really lucky.

As you said, stats always can be gained quite fast, therefore I realized after 1st gens that I would rather focus on both conformation and low NSS in my breeding programs (no inbred, linebred or broken pedigrees - also no horses with other disciplines as I think it counts when comes to breeding in further generations). I also search for similar things in horses when I buy (plus high horse points if it's older).
But I can only agree with all of the things said above. It's the best to play and breed as you wish, as there's no real market for selling horses - or it's quite inconsistent at the moment. 

Regarding NSS drop, I wonder if there's a bug in the code, because for me it has always worked (calculations are accurate and I have possible drops if I have luck) with new horses after it was implemented (although I'm still around 54-56 NSS on average with not long lines behind my back), but when I bred a pair of pre-recode TBs with high confo and low NSS, none of their foals had any extra drop in NSS although calculations were good (here they are).

I think better foals are produced (or rather standard deviation is smaller) when you put more work into your horses (more exp), but I still need more experience and breedings to make sure. I also understand that not everyone wants to wait 15-20 weeks for a potential foal just because standard deviation is smaller. I just really hope all the work I put into every gen pays back with the higher and/or faster improvement of future foals.

Last edited on 2022-01-04 at 04:36:37 by Olivia

Oh I totally agree, I feel like NSS should drop more often than it does now with longer lines (I feel this is a good motivational feature). I always try my best to pair offset NSS by category (ex even strength # with odd strength #), with this I can drop an average of 1.5NSS per generation with no luck!

Also, I have 50 pairs for my G1 QH’s, and I plan to breed them 6 times and keep one foal (and then 2 from each following generation to maintain herd size) but.. that leaves me with 100 horses and 300 foals 💀 I’m not sure what to do with them all!

Last edited on 2022-01-04 at 07:31:12 by Saditome

 Just to clarify, decrease on NSS are done on a percentage range, you are less likely to get a decrease the lower you go. If I recall correctly this is to avoid getting to 0 stats quickly as this isn’t competitive/fair in showing. 



Last edited on 2022-01-04 at 09:30:03 by maplɛ

Ah ok, that makes a lot of sense, thank you maple!

I probably just have terrible luck then :'D As I have Villain Kid here whose NSS stats aren't much lower then his great, great grandfather Jafar (one is even higher then Jafar's), but then I've also never cared if their NSS were wonky for my chosen discipline when grabbing from the EC and just went with what I got, being more concerned if a horse had the grey gene, the one gene I can remember, since I'm terrible at breeding it out :'D So there is that.

Aloha Skies had two pre-recode grandparents on one side (can't recall if their parent was also pre-recode, but hers were a bit lower then the grandparents), and her stats are higher then theirs because of being bred to a horse from after the recode, though they are considerably lower then the other parent's.

So I guess I miss being able to notice the stats lowering each generation, as I honestly thought I remember seeing somewhere that 0 stats weren't going to be possible anymore and it doesn't really seem to be lowering by much at all to me :'D 

I’m going to try my hardest lmao Maybe not 0, but my first home bred foal with 30 NSS? Yes please. I don’t mind if it takes some speed breeding lol Man if I could get 5+ generations of breeding in a year? Sign me up.

Edit: Granted, it’s going to take a long time, but it’s a very fun side project for myself.

Last edited on 2022-01-04 at 11:14:49 by Saditome

ooo that would explain why these two had 3 foals all with 7 NSS each. of course that's not really a lot of foals (i actually just breed twice within my pairs but i really wanted their colors to pass down) but i was surprised to see not even a little variation in any of them. but it's nice that it's still possible to breed down NSS without having to rely on perfectly matching the parent NSS (something i'm very bad at c:) or the limited supply of pre-recode horses.

as a side note i wonder if the view on overbreeding has lessened a bit now that breeding a few times is actually optimal for reducing NSS. there's still the issue of finding new stock that isn't already related to yours though. but if people are just breeding pairs several times and then culling higher NSS foals or keeping for themselves it's probably not that bad.

Last edited on 2022-01-04 at 12:34:42 by Forgotten Land (Bubbles)